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The only problem is what Norway is doing isn't winning the lottery. If you get x from oil companies and also take y from your citizens at a combined rate high enough to build the sovereign fund you hurt your economy. All along your "y" could have been considerably less or zero possibly
Your thinking is incredibly short term. Economic growth normally only measures INCOME, but what Norway is doing is taxing some of that income and turning it into WEALTH, which, if invested properly, will IMPROVE their overall income level over the LONG TERM and it will reduce their need to tax citizens. But you have to think long term, not short term.
Now, I will be the first one to say that I would never trust the U.S. goverment with such a scheme. We're too corrupt. But Norway is a small country with low corruption, so they have a decent chance of pulling this off.
Norway has the best overall quality of life and health outcomes, arguably, of any nation in history. They have almost no crime, extremely clean and well-maintained roads, groundwater, and air. They are, per capita, the richest nation (excepting Luxembourg or Monaco perhaps, which are more small city-states) in the history of the world. The insanity of saying that the public sector in Norway is "ineffective" or that their social services are "third world" is obvious.
They aren't being "taxed to death" by any stretch. Indeed, they have very low debt and the enormous sovereign fund that is the subject of this thread, and yet still are one of the most prosperous and egalitarian societies in world history. Including the rest of Scandinavia (which all have high taxes and large government) makes the success of their system even more apparent. You oppose government and perceptions of Socialism and seem to have some bizarre protestant work ethos as well. Doesn't matter; the evidence refutes you.
Why should a society that doesn't need 100% of its population working force them to work? Isn't that the great promise that industrialization was supposed to bring; that workers would be able to work less and less and fewer workers would be necessary to combat scarcity? What is the purpose of wasting one's life living to work (and working to death) instead of working to live!?
Everything you said was a question-begging fallacy. Why is there something wrong with high taxation and a very large government? Why is there something wrong with the social services, generous social welfare benefits, long paternity and maternity leave, early retirement, short working hours, etc...? Why is it unhealthy to be more public sector than private? It's not unhealthy, at least not for Norway, and I can only fight every day I remain in the U.S. to make us more like Norway rather than exporting our toxic economic orthodoxy and inequality to the few remaining countries it has failed to infect.
I agree with your general philosophy here. The only problem I have with your post is that the U.S. public services are often poor and our government is corrupt. Many Americans mistakenly assume all governments are corrupt like ours or are even worse (which is usually true). However, the Scandinavian countries generally are not corrupt, or at least are much less corrupt/incompetent than government in here in America.
See, this is the part I don't get. The public sector can produce anything the private sector can, and services are just as much products as goods. I'd rather have everything controlled by the people through the public sector than an unaccountable private sector in which a dollar is a vote.
In America, our government is just as unaccountable as big business is. In general, competition between businesses has brought us better results than government monopolies on services. In areas where the private sector has performed poorly (such as health care), it's usually due to limited competition. You base things on your experience of government Norway. But our experience of government in America is different (and usually different in a bad way).
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 05-28-2014 at 10:08 PM..
the average person may only pay 25% but when people start earning more...
You say this like it's a bad thing.
Quote:
...the only thing stopping it from being called a capitalist country is.. taxation + social welfare.
Really?
You want lower social welfare costs in the US? (I certainly do).
Do something meaningful about the root causes... and then spend the money better.
Done and done.
You have no clue what you are talking about. You know how much wealth we have as a country? Norway might have a small population but if we established a national sovereign wealth fund it would easily be in the trillions not billions. We have 100x the resources Norway has which is exactly how they fund their sovereign wealth fund. 70% or so of Norwegian natural resources are nationalized. The other 30% are for private use. We have more oil in parts of Alaska than all of Norway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoomzoom3 View Post
Keep in mind they only have about 5,000,000 people to support with those funds.
That $905 billion wouldn't go anywhere trying to support 320,000,000 like we have here in the US. Think how fun things will be here in the US when we have over a billion people like China and India! We'll have poverty on the same scale pretty much.
Silliness of a very large order of magnitude.
Norway has to extract and then sell resources on the world markets to get $905B USD. And 'they the people' so desire, and it has been done.
The US, as the sole creator of USD, does not have to do this. It can do so if 'we the people so desire', but it is not obliged to. (private vs national resources)
In 2008 for instance we created on the order of $700B - out of thin air - for TARP and such. All done without mining, extracting and/or selling our resources on the world markets. Despite having the resources to do so, if 'we the people' so desire.
Owning the worlds reserve certainly has its merits!
You want lower social welfare costs in the US? (I certainly do).
Do something meaningful about the root causes... and then spend the money better.
Done and done.
It is bad. you spend you whole life trying to earn more money by getting promoted etc and then when you do, more of if gets taken away ? its bad for productivity. whats the point of working hard if you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your own labour ?
personally, i think social welfare breeds unproductivity and it allows the population to be financially irresponsible. all this unproductivity is costing US tax payers $500 billion, and also the economy.
It is bad. you spend you whole life trying to earn more money by getting promoted etc and then when you do, more of if gets taken away ? its bad for productivity. whats the point of working hard if you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your own labour ?
personally, i think social welfare breeds unproductivity and it allows the population to be financially irresponsible. all this unproductivity is costing US tax payers $500 billion, and also the economy.
You have no clue what you are talking about. You know how much wealth we have as a country? Norway might have a small population but if we established a national sovereign wealth fund it would easily be in the trillions not billions. We have 100x the resources Norway has which is exactly how they fund their sovereign wealth fund. 70% or so of Norwegian natural resources are nationalized. The other 30% are for private use. We have more oil in parts of Alaska than all of Norway.
I see that you could not resist opening with such an unflattering statement. Yet if it were ever justified, I would nominate fogetting about the vast inheretence of the US taking the better part of temperate North America and then some.
95% of all necessarily false economic assertions are based upon working one side of the equation. My jaw drops every time I see someone pass off Norway for being blessed in natural resources as if North America is nothing but a smooth rock sticking out from the sea. Would the territory of the US really go for the same price as Norway?
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoomzoom3 View Post
Keep in mind they only have about 5,000,000 people to support with those funds.
That $905 billion wouldn't go anywhere trying to support 320,000,000 like we have here in the US. Think how fun things will be here in the US when we have over a billion people like China and India! We'll have poverty on the same scale pretty much.
Silliness of a very large order of magnitude.
Norway has to extract and then sell resources on the world markets to get $905B USD. And 'they the people' so desire, and it has been done.
The US, as the sole creator of USD, does not have to do this. It can do so if 'we the people so desire', but it is not obliged to. (private vs national resources)
In 2008 for instance we created on the order of $700B - out of thin air - for TARP and such. All done without mining, extracting and/or selling our resources on the world markets. Despite having the resources to do so, if 'we the people' so desire.
Owning the worlds reserve certainly has its merits!
So does being able to sell seal meat with pilaf of coconut with a label that says - product of USA - .
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